Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(21)

“Put her in the dumpster,” he continues. “No one’ll find her for a while. Nobody will think anything if dogs come sniffing around…”

My pulse whooshes in my ears. “No.”

“Fine. I’ll do it.” He takes his weapon back from me. “Go change. Got your clothes in the back of the car. Quick and painless, okay?” He chambers a bullet, weapon flashing in the sun. He catches me staring. “You like? Platinum-plated German number.”

I watch myself close my fingers around his wrist, my corded hand tight on his shooting arm, matching scars on our skin. “I got it under control.”

He stills and looks up at me, eyes like emeralds. Softly, he says, “Do you?”

“Yeah. I’ll handle her,” I growl.

He frowns. I wonder if he’s thinking about how I let them trap me, frame me. My stomach twists as I remember the spray of the cop’s brains on the pavement. The governor’s men pointing at me like I did it. The gun I hadn’t seen in forever, glinting on the ground. My gun, my prints. Masterful f*cking frame-up job. We hadn’t even seen it coming.

“Grayson,” he says. “Don’t be f*cked up.”

I grab the back of his head and pull him in, close enough to kiss, and look at him straight. “I said I got it.”

The moment draws out, then I feel him soften. “Fine, I get it. I understand.” He twists his arm out of my grip. “Two years. Okay. Fuck her and then kill her.”

I let him go. “Safer anyway, going in separate cars.” It’s true, and we both know it. “We have to get out of here. I’ll meet you back there.” At the Bradford, I mean.

“They’ll be looking for that thing.” He nods at her little car.

“I’ll change the plates. I got this.”

He grins. “Good to have you back again, brother.” He reaches into the car and pulls out a bundle. Clothes. I strip down to my boxers. He takes the guard uniform and stuffs it into a nearby barrel as I pull on the black T-shirt and a familiar pair of jeans.

“Fuck, yeah,” I say. He even brought my old work boots. He hands me money, identification, plus a phone. He offers me a piece, but I have the Glock I got off the guard.

“Take 54 to I-98,” he says.

“I know the way.”

Franklin City is at least ten hours away from here. Most people are moving out of Franklin City these days—huge chunks of it are abandoned, crumbling, not just the neighborhood where the Bradford is, but beyond it, like a spreading disease. And then on the outer edges of it are the mansions, like parasites, feeding. That’s where the governor lives.

Stone heads back to the Dodge. He assumes I’ll kill her, and that makes me uncomfortable—because I don’t lie to my guys. Especially not to Stone. We’re brothers. Closer than brothers. What is it called when you walk through the same fire and wear the same scars?

I go back to the Honda as he tears out onto the two-lane highway. I set my hand on the hood and suck in the sweet smell of freedom, waiting until his car is the size of a penny. I lean down and look at Abby. Still trembling. Is that all she’d do if I touched her? Tremble?

It fills me with an uncomfortable mix of hate and lust.

The car door is light as tin; I get a bad feeling, like I forgot something important.

It’s only when I’m seated and buckled up that I realize she’s gone past trembling. She’s in full-on earthquake mode.

She heard us talking.

Fucking old cars with their shit insulation. I reach for her, but she’s expecting that. She bolts from the car and runs on foot. My long-ass legs are folded into the floorboard and my shoulders are practically hunched, so it takes me a good sixty seconds to unbuckle, get out, and round the car, weapon in hand. By that time she’s across the street and racing into the woods.

I cross the road and dive into the brush after her. She’s going to be sorry she ran. I follow the sound of her crashing through the underbrush with Stone’s voice in my head. Shoot her. Get out of the area.

But I can’t—not yet.

That’s when the sirens sound.

Fuck!

The car is just begging for someone to stop and check it out, parked in an abandoned station with both doors hanging open. They’ll call it in. Find out it’s hers.

I’m going to catch her. And when I do, I’m going to teach her what happens when you disobey.

There’s a natural order to people: the strong and the weak. I’ve been the weaker one before. I know how much it hurts. But pain only makes you harder. Stronger.





Chapter Fifteen




Abigail


I run like hell through the woods, pepper spray clutched in my hand. The underbrush feels like nails, digging at my arms and cheeks as I pass, but it’s not the kind of thing you care about when an escaped prisoner is trying to kill you.

I crash over a bed of sticks and moldy leaves in my stupid high-heel boots, running like crazy toward the darkest part of the woods—we passed a lot of fields, and that’s exactly where I don’t want to end up. Grayson would have a clear shot in a field.

Here is messy. Bad place for a body, he’d said.

I know the next stop would be somewhere good to leave a dead body. Maybe a river.

I jump a fallen tree and stumble, smashing my shin into a rock so hard it feels like I cracked a bone. I hear the brush snapping behind me, and something else—a siren! I jump up and keep going, racing madly. They’ll find my car. Will he forget about me and save himself? Maybe they’ll come out here with dogs.